1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of telecommunications and, in particular, to a system for managing a telecommunications network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephony based communication networks typically include a variety of components or products that combine to provide communication services to multiple users. Traditionally, these networks utilize dedicated application programs for each of the network components to control configuration and management of the corresponding components. Dedicated PBX and phone mail applications, as examples, have provided the traditional method of managing a communication network that includes a PBX component and a phone mail component. Unfortunately, the performance of such systems during execution of routine system management tasks such as move, add, and change tasks is frequently unacceptable to the end user. As an example, when a user of the communication network moves within an organization, the various components of the network must be updated to reflect the user's new location. While traditional configuration and management applications are adequate to control a specific product or component, they are typically poorly adapted to recognize and manage relationships between the various components of the network. A conventional network might, for example, represent a user by copying all of the phone data and all of the phone mail data for the person to a distinct user entity. It will be appreciated that such an approach contemplates a significant and undesirable duplication of data. In addition, the traditional approach to managing communication networks frequently lacks sufficient flexibility to smoothly integrate new products or components into the network. Systems designed around a finite number of defined component types must typically undergo substantial revision to encompass a new product thereby slowing the introduction of new features and raising the cost of maintaining the network. Therefore it would be highly desirable to implement a communication network with improved performance and flexibility. It would be still further desirable if the implemented solution utilized existing protocols and architectures to the extent possible and took advantage of relationships between various components to model network features in an efficient manner.